By Father John Adamski

Recycling 2 was my first experience with this archdiocesan program for young people. Last year’s Recycling 1 had wheeled on by without me. All the adults and senior high team members had expressed some hesitation about his year’s program because it would be geared to ninth and tenth graders. Our stereotypes won the day as we worried about how young people would participate and respond to the weekend experience.

Fortunately our reservations were unfounded. Recycling 2 was a very positive time for all of us, adults and young people. The ninth and tenth grade participants were amazingly serious and enthusiastic about everything from the celebration of the liturgy to the hours of the Virginia Reel.

Personally, the most significant aspect of the experience was the sense that our time of sharing was really what the Church, the Christian community, is all about. Around 90 young people came from all over north Georgia. They brought with them an eagerness to be involved, to learn and to grow. I don’t think that it was possible to miss that atmosphere of cooperation.

So often we adults bemoan the lack of faith which today’s young people seem, to us at least, suffer from. Perhaps they weren’t a completely typical group, after all they did make the effort to come for a weekend retreat. But this was one group that was quite serious about what living as a Christian might mean at this stage in their lives. Our faith in Jesus Christ was our common bond and it held us together beautifully.

My particular involvement centered in the “Life Ministries” task force. Our group, adults and some 20 young people, pursued an understanding of Christianity in terms of various life commitments: priesthood, sisters and lay people—married or not. Basically we were concerned with the notion of vocation.

Our outline for the task force sessions started with some attention to the whole idea of living as a Christian. After discussion along those lines, we moved to an awareness of the Christian obligation to serve others. That was a natural lead-in to the various life commitments through which any Christian person can fulfill that service responsibility.

While it would be wrong to assume that every young person with us was open to each of the life ministry choices which we discussed, I did have the definite feeling that we were sharing a stage in their lives where no definite decisions had been reached.

They were willing to listen seriously as we communicated our feelings about the value of the commitments which we had already made. They recognized that we are serious about our lives. We saw that same serious searching in them. It was a valuable exchange.

Recycling 2 left me feeling again that the lack of vocations in Church service today is not just, nor even primarily, a problem of today’s young people. Instead, it seems again that we adults may not be doing all that we are capable of to really share and live the reality of the Church. The fact that many adults do not value the commitments of priests, sisters or even their own marriage, has a great impact on the young people in our families and community.

Recycling 2 was a brief experience of what the Church really is meant to be in our lives. The participants captured that spirit quickly and eagerly. Hopefully, we adults can communicate that same spirit more effectively from our experience. When that happens, there won’t be a vocation problem any longer.